Undaunted, I set off for Georgia on a very hot Sunday (two days ago), arriving without incident (except that following the GPS took me to the neighbor's house first) at 8:00 p.m. Jason, owner of the topper welcomed me and helped me install the topper and clamp it down.
A small amount of money ($150) changed hands (as opposed to 1200 to 1400 for a new topper), and I was back on the road, despite Jason's offer of a place to crash for the night. I really wanted to get through Atlanta when the traffic volume was less than I had seen there during some rush hours over the years, when I either had to drive through Atlanta, or drive from or to the airport.
Jason and his little family fulfilled all the best traditions of southern hospitality, and left me with a great impression of Georgia. I do want to mention one incident when I had first entered Georgia on Sunday afternoon, though. There was a welcome center sign along the Interstate. Though the sign clearly said the welcome center closed at 5:00 p.m., I thought there would at least be restroom facilities available. I was not alone. Literally hundreds of others were pulling in to the parking lot, getting out of their cars, and searching for a restroom. Alas, everything was locked up tight.
Thus hundreds of people were walking around the building hoping for a way in. At least we all got some much-needed exercise. I challenge the great state of Georgia to come up with a more clearly worded sign at such welcome centers, or to set up separate restroom facilities that are open all the time.
I made it through Atlanta without problems and later spent a couple of hours under the new topper on top of an air mattress and a sleeping bag (despite the high altitude of Monteagle, Georgia, it was still in the very high 80s).
The nearby drive-through, the sound of big trucks passing on the not-too-distant Interstate, and the lullaby of tree frogs (thousands of them in the trees behind the gas station parking lot) lulled me into a kind of stupor that stopped short of sleep, but that gave my eyes some much-needed rest.
At 1:30 a.m. I gave up on sleeping and hit the road again. There are several advantages to traveling through the night: It wasn't nearly as hot as the day before had been. The traffic kept thinning out until about 5:00 a.m., when it started to pick up again. The cities were really easy to navigate, with only a modest amount of traffic (the GPS gave ample warning of coming turns and complications).
With only requisite gas and restroom stops, I kept rolling until I came to a rest area north of Marion, Illinois. By that time the sun was well up. This time I didn't open the topper's side windows, thinking to block out the diesel engine noise (the sleeping truckers were using their ACs, so the engines had to run). The increasing warmth and the sound of a multitude of diesel engines woke me. I might have fared better (i.e., slept longer) at a different rest area, because that particular one had the trucks right next to the cars. There was a big rig idling about 20 feet behind my pickup.
I arrived safely at home at 11:30 a.m., having driven 1280 miles in 26 and a half hours, not bad for an old geezer. I'm thankful that I had no near misses (at least of which I'm aware), and that I saw no serious accidents.
Despite the rains in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, my trip was dry. Despite the high winds in Iowa and northern Illinois, I experienced nothing of the sort on my trip.
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Here's the topper. Mission accomplished. (double-click to see entire photo)
Here's a rest area (cell phone photo) at Rend Lake, Kentucky.
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